A diving toy, or a dive stick, is an amusement device used in swimming pools. A dive stick may comprise a buoyant body, which may be greater in length than it is in girth. The dive stick may have a weight at one end that is sufficient to cause the body to sink in water and a buoyant portion which will allow the dive stick to stand upright, weighted side down, on the bottom of a swimming pool.
Dive sticks may be used, for example, in training or recreational activities. In some recreational activities, one or more dive sticks may be disposed into a body of fluid, for example, the water of a swimming pool, so that the dive sticks sink to the bottom of the swimming pool and stand vertically due to an at least partially buoyant characteristic of the dive sticks.
During play with these sticks in various games and exercises, several swimmers competing either individually, against each other, or as members of competing teams, dive into the pool and retrieve one or more sticks standing at the bottom of the pool. Besides being a form of amusement, such games and exercises improve the abilities of the swimmers to hold their breath for extended times while completing tasks and otherwise exerting energy to improve their underwater swimming skills.
In one dive stick game, differing point values are assigned to each stick, and swimmers obtain a score according to the total value of the sticks they have retrieved. In another game, swimmers or teams are assigned individual sticks and obtain a score equal to the number of sticks they have retrieved in a single dive. In many games, a diver's ability to readily and visually recognize the value or type of stick is critical to success in the game.
Conventional dive sticks may be designed as a single, stand-alone unit. As such, the level of amusement conventional dive sticks provide and the amount of underwater dive stick games that can be played with them is limited. Furthermore, swimmers using conventional dive sticks for training purposes are often limited not by the depth they can swim to, or their ability to hold breath, but by the amount of dive sticks they can grasp in their hands. This is particularly relevant to younger swimmers who are still learning to swim and dive, but have small hands that are insufficient to pick up or hold more than a few dive sticks at a time. As a result, a swimmer's training efficiency may be affected. It is apparent that there is a need for a dive stick that increases the amount of underwater games that can be played, the level of enjoyment obtained from said games, and a swimmer's training efficiency, to name a few.
Dive-rings overcome the problems associated with conventional dive sticks because users are no longer limited by the number of sticks they can grasp in their hands, which is particularly relevant to children with small hands. For example, the user can wear dive-rings on their arms, legs, neck, head, waist, over the shoulder, or any other body part, thereby allowing the user's hands to remain free to grasp other dive-rings, dive sticks, or any other underwater object. Further, dive-rings can be configured to virtually any diameter. For beginners, dive-rings can be configured in a larger size for easy grasping. Larger dive-rings also allow for increased amusement, such as allowing a swimmer to pass through the dive-ring while underwater, such that the dive-ring is used as a hoop.